


not to touch

by viscrael



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extended Metaphors, M/M, Pre-Slash, basically i just wanted to write kei crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5501738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don’t you know to shove that away in the drawer of your childhood?</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>The drawer fell open one day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not to touch

**Author's Note:**

> i love hurt/comfort bc im Horrible + i realized i stILL hadnt written tsukkiyama even tho theyre like. my second biggest hq otp, next to kagehina
> 
> speaking of kagehina, theres like a two word ment of them so heads up

Tsukishima was hard edges and cool tones most of the time; fogged mirror and shattered glass swept under the rug, bandages with no purpose, a glare from the sun that hurt your eyes. He was a steady heartbeat and lithe hands pushing glasses up the bridge of his nose. He was night and winter and the moon. He was indifference; he was _I don’t care_.

Tadashi had never been any of those things. Instead, he was just this: sweaty palms and what others thought, ragged breath, malleable like dough and a hand mirror in a bathroom drawer, the sky on a cloudy day and a report card full of B average. He was inexplicably ordinary. Inexplicably nothing. Forgettable.

To top it all off, as a child, he was a crybaby. Couldn’t control anything, not even his emotions—or maybe especially not his emotions. Big crocodile tears that rolled down his cheeks, juvenile, pitiful. Another reason to poke fun. Another reason to cry. He was an angry crier, and a stress crier, and a happy crier—he was a crier. He hadn’t been all that ashamed of this fact until it was pointed out, until it was bad suddenly. Pitiable little boy, crying so much, so much emotion, heart on his sleeve. Don’t you know to shove that away in the drawer of your childhood?

 

\--

 

Tsukishima had a drawer like that, residing in the back of his head under piles and piles of caution tape reading DO NOT CROSS, labeled nothing but _Not To Touch_. He didn’t look at it, but Tadashi caught glimpses of it sometimes, when he snickered at a vulgar joke or smirked quietly at his own, boyish delight and humor pressing through edged features.

Sometimes, Tadashi thought that Tsukki had buried it so far away that even _he_ forgot it was there. But Tadashi remembered when they were little and it had yet to be buried, when the drawer was empty, or better yet, nonexistent. He remembered, and remembering made it easier to pick out the difference and see the shadow of _Not To Touch_. The changes weren’t subtle; it made it easier to see. The rest of the team wasn’t aware it was there. No one else knew it existed at all. Only Tadashi.

And maybe, he added to his thoughts belatedly, Tsukki.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, it felt like Akiteru was the only other person who still remembered what Tsukki was like before. Tadashi didn’t talk to their parents, and had very little friends when he was growing up besides Tsukki, so he had no one else to gain reference from besides Akiteru. But none of the kids from their class seemed to notice anything about the change. Or if they did, they said nothing.

The team didn’t know. No one at Karasuno knew, and so they just thought Tsukki was a jerk. But it wasn’t Tadashi’s business to tell them. And it wasn’t his business to defend Tsukishima, no matter how much he wanted to.

 

\--

 

Tsukishima was verbal in most things, at least things that didn’t let anyone know anything about him. Disdain, annoyance, frustration—all things he was quick to let others in on. He didn’t waste time verbalizing those emotions.

Tadashi and Tsukki were the last to leave the clubroom, next to Kageyama and Hinata. The two only left first because Tadashi figured, with the way the freak duo was making eyes at each other, it was better to leave them alone.

Tsukki rolled his eyes, slinging his bag over his shoulder, but followed out the door. “Didn’t want to stay around those two anyway.”

They walked home together like normal, but neither spoke, and a silence fell on them from Tsukki’s last words. Tadashi knew he was being quieter than usual. It didn’t stop him from _staying_ quiet, though.

 

\--

 

“I’m kind of happy for them.”

Tsukki barely looked up from his book. “Hm?”

“Hinata and Kageyama. I’m happy for them.”

“…”

Tadashi leaned against the chair in front of Tsukki’s desk. Homeroom was empty besides them and a few other kids, all doing their own thing. Still, he kept his voice low to avoid being overheard.

“They’re…good together. Hinata’s told me he’s happy, at least.”

When this got him no response, despite the other’s attention obviously being on the topic at hand, he prompted, “What do you think?”

“Why should I care what the two idiots do?” But the response was a lie, and Tadashi was reminded, once again, of the drawer. “It’s none of my business.”

“…Right.”

 

\--

 

If Tadashi was forgettable, Tsukishima was not. Tall, cool, intimidating; he made everyone around him want to impress him, regardless of whether he knew he was doing it or not (but Tadashi had a feeling he knew). He was effortlessly good at everything, and when he wasn’t, he didn’t care; it didn’t bother him.

It bothered Tadashi.

 

\--

 

The drawer fell open one day.

Not in the sense that Tsukki went through the back of his head and rifled through it—but in the sense that somebody else did, and in their rifling, they broke it, and the contents fell out and forward. Some shattered. Some spilled.

Tsukishima shattered. Tsukishima spilled.

A moment of vulnerability in a lifetime of shard edges; Tadashi was there, for better or for worse, to see the shattering and spilling. He wasn’t built to comfort. He wasn’t made to fix things.

But he was going to damn well try.

 

\--

 

Tsukishima was, in that moment, nothing but malleable, ragged heartbeat, sweaty palms, big crocodile tears, juvenile, pitiful. His glasses were in the way. Tadashi slid them off his face with much more gentleness than he had imagined himself capable of.

Tsukki was breathing—messily, jaggedly, barely—but breathing. And Tadashi was there—uncertain, hesitant, cautious—but there. He didn’t bother asking what was wrong, didn’t ask for any sort of sign that the blonde was okay, but that was maybe more because it was so clear that he was not.

_Not To Touch_ had been touched, had been more than touched, had been ruined, and he was not okay.

Tadashi pulled him forward until the other’s forehead was pressed to his shoulder and there were tears dripping onto his t-shirt and it didn’t matter. He didn’t know what to do but hug. That was all the comfort he’d ever been taught to give, and so he gave it, wrapped tan arms around a slopped back and barely mumbled into Tsukki’s temple, _you’re okay, it’s okay_.

He knew that the other would hate being told that, would spit something about it being patronizing and stupid, just empty promises, but all other words escaped him. It was the only mantra he knew to give, and so he gave it.

“It’s okay,” he kept saying, and it occurred to him belatedly that Tsukishima was hugging him back.

The shock of this realization (because when was the last time they’d _hugged_? When was the last time the other had _returned_ it?) was enough for him to let slip a, “Kei,” before he bit his tongue.

But there came no jolt at the word and therefore no backlash. Kei shattered and spilled, and wrapped his arms further around Tadashi, and Tadashi only mumbled, nothings that should’ve been empty. He tried to fill them, make them everythings because that was all he knew to do.

“Kei,” he kept saying, something more like a whisper. “Kei.”

 

\--

 

“Thank you.”

The only recognition that it had happened at all: two words, said as Tadashi was slinging his bag over his shoulder and leaving to head home, delivered with a blonde head to the ground and eyes trained steadily on the paper in front of him.

But it was enough.

Tadashi nodded.

“See you at practice tomorrow, Tsukki.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i love yama and i love tsukki and i just *clenches fist*


End file.
